


Ocean of Worlds: Elliot

by Arkscythe



Category: Original Work
Genre: Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 13:39:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20115982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arkscythe/pseuds/Arkscythe
Summary: Hey guys, this is part of a book i'm writing and i'm working hard to make it come to be a reality... it's about self reflection and the desire to do better but with my own kind of spin into it. Let me know what you think!





	Ocean of Worlds: Elliot

Chapter 1

Have you ever felt the world revolved around you? 

And I don’t mean that you are the center of the universe or that everything goes your way because you’re something special… but rather that things never seem to go your way. It’s something I’m sure a lot of people feel, like all the good luck in the world just spins around you and keeps away like the opposing of two magnets pushing against each other. It isn’t something that no one’s above… I know we have those times in our lives but I just wish mine had come later in my life and not so early… not when it was supposed to be the beginning and most exciting time of my life. 

I sighed as I walked along the outside of a country house, the outside eaten by time as boards were loose and once pure white paint now seemed stained with dirt, gentle wind swaying the trees that stood behind and around me. I smiled at a place that felt like a shadow to home, only at 22 here for my last chance. I bit my lip and looked down at the ground, thinking of how exactly I got here… 

My name is Elliot Olmen, I am son of a mother who had successfully persisted to get a PhD in the sciences and a father who works for the government. They divorced when I was little and since then i’d been juggled around without any direct parent to me… besides the grandparents who took care of me from my fathers side. With them it felt like I was home, like they were the people I could trust and as a kid I truly did trust them with my worries and my dreams. As I got older though, the loneliness and hurt I received from a mother who focused only on her school and a father who judged me for all my flaws and faults made fell inadequate. I tried hard to make something of myself after I was done with highschool, I wanted to get a job, live a life with a family, and just go along with everything else without the worry of anything else. 

I wanted to be happy like everyone else.

But life doesn’t work that way. At least not for me. I failed college once, couldn’t make it into a nursing program, was dumped by the girl I loved of 3 years with her now getting married, lost my grandmother who supported me, and now was being forced to go into the air force due to my father being disgusted with my choices and failures. For the 4 years between now and being 18, I felt like the world had genuinely hated me and that I just didn’t deserve the happiness I saw everyone else have. So in a final attempt, my father sent me to the ranch I once hailed as my escape from the worries and problems, greeted by my grandfather who stood alone with his once bald head and clean form now worn down. His eyes greyer with circles from lack of sleep, happy to see his son and grandson before I was pushed onto him like some kind of cattle. I could see the pain in my grandfather as he waved goodbye to his only son, his frail hand on my shoulder as the smile held so much behind it on his face. I felt for him, looking after the car that took me away from my captivity and left me here with a ghost of person. Much like myself… I couldn’t lie, I was depressed, hurt, like buried into a hole deep beneath the ground that people stepped on because I was incomplete. I couldn’t stand by myself, I couldn’t be anything more than what I was… and my grandfather who had someone by his side for his life was gone now. I could almost see the hole in his heart… and now we were left here together so that I could train to lose the weight I gained from depression to be able to go into the air force. That or I make a choice to do something with my already broken life, a decision that I was incapable to make due to my own lack of confidence. It was going to be long… but I had to at least try right?

Now here I was a few months later with little to show for it, I had lost some pounds but it still wasn’t enough to get in. I would receive texts asking when i’d be done and few of my friends would reach out from time to time to see if I was going to come back to town but I always seemed to dodge the questions. I couldn’t answer for things when I still had so much trouble finding myself deep beneath all my own failures. I know it’s wrong to complain about it when people have suffered through so much worse in wars and when they have worse lives… but for me… it was like blinking and I would see it all over again…

Standing with the report of all F’s from a prestigous school…

Sitting in my car with the email that I couldn’t get into nursing…

Kneeling as I watched the person I loved more than anything throw me away like trash…

Standing next to the casket of one of the only people I ever trusted with eyes that would never open again….

And now I’m here with only one path left. It felt so wrong and I felt so robbed… and maybe it’s why I couldn’t lose the weight. Nothing against my grandfather though… He always hugged me and told me that I could do it, that he believed in me and that I wouldn’t fail. He was the father I so desperately needed and it made me feel the littlest bit happy, a small fragment of life ignited in me and maybe the same for him, a son when his real one wouldn’t come. We were the same and here I was understood… it was enough to keep me going even if I didn’t have a direction.

In truth I didn’t want to go into the Air Force, it wasn’t my first choice.

In fact that thing I really took pride in was writing. I felt like I was pretty good at it, that in those words I could escape to worlds of my own creation, express my heart as wounded as it was and have the happy ending I really wanted. It always made me smile thinking of all the things I had written, the characters, the stories, and the vast worlds I had inside my head that let me express parts of myself I couldn’t talk to my friends about or to my family as disconnected as they were. To me, it was the secrets inside that would give me the power to live somewhat sanely despite my problem of memory and past. 

But life works in strange ways… and decided to throw a wrench into how things work. To how things should be.

Like it always does.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I came in from the outside sweating from another day of hard work, the heat having once again been unbearable as I fixed fences, dug holes, and fixed up what I could with the direction of my grandfather who followed after me. His voice followed after me as he loaded the washer with his clothes that were caked in sweat as much as mine were.

“So what do you want for dinner tonight? We gotta eat healthy so…”

I answered back, turning to him, his bald head having grown some gray fuzz, his wrinkled eyes behind glasses, his body shriveled with age and standing a little shorter than me when I was only 5’6”.

“How about we cook up some hamburgers, chop them up and mix them with some salad?”

Grandpa pointed at me with a smile, a silent nod of approval to my idea that told me we’d be having just that. I smiled back at him before turning to go to my room, grabbing clothes before heading to the bathroom for a shower. I closed the door with a click and looked at myself in the mirror, shirtless with some moisture left from having sweat. I was 22 but not some really old gruff man, I like to makes sure my face is shaved and my hair stay relatively short, though it looked as if I was growing bangs now, hair almost grown over my ears. My eyes were a deep brown, intimidating to most people but I could see it was just devoid of the life and excitement I should have at my age. My body was somewhat toned, nothing that was absolutely insane, able to look skinny with a shirt on but having a little bit of a stomach when the shirt came off. I sighed as I grabbed at it, feeling somewhat regret at eating unhealthy delicious food as most people my age did… and having to pay a price for it. I pulled a towel out of the cabinet and set it down on the toilet and showered, drying myself off as I could smell meat cooking when I opened the door to the bathroom. I smirked as I couldn’t wait for dinner, Grandpa calling from the kitchen.

“You gonna write again or can I take a shower?”

I was never one to leave my grandfather to feel like a dog out of the mud with rain so close, able to sprint once clean without any worry. I grabbed my small composition book, walked to the kitchen and handled the cooking. Between each moment I checked, I looked through the book and read some of the stories I’d written. I could see how far I had come, seeing stories that didn’t hold full continuity or flow slowly evolve into being bigger, more drawn-out stories with hidden background stories that took time to really draw out if one paid attention. For me, it was really a pride and joy to bring those worlds to life, stories that humanized demons, stories that humanized villains, stories that demonized heroes, stories that many wouldn’t dare write or felt they didn’t hold enough of a puzzle to them. At least… as far as I had known. I couldn’t really write about the heroes honestly…

It wasn’t because I disliked heroes or anything like that but because in my mind… I couldn’t picture myself as one. I felt scarred to a point where I was morally ambiguous and it didn’t at all strike me of how it would come to such a choice where I would have to decide on my path… and it didn’t feel wrong to take the choice only a monster could take.

I stared at the book as those thoughts hit me as they usually did before I could smell the meat becoming a little too cooked. I immediately threw my book onto the counter and went back to focusing on the cooking, breathing a heavy sigh of relief as I could see it was only a little seared. Soon, I cut the patties and made the salad for two and my grandfather was already sitting in the living room, rubbing his bald head as he flipped through channels on the television, voices mixing and melding before finally it stopped as he smiled at a war movie. I handed him his food and sat on an opposite couch to him, eating slowly as I enjoyed the mind numbing entertainment we seemed to always watch now. It was our own little ritual, and maybe to some extent a comfort to Grandpa since he had always watched shows with my Grandmother when she was alive. The room was cozy and I could feel myself growing relaxed, my muscles sore. Soon, we finished our food, I washed the dishes, put them away after drying, hugged my grandfather goodnight, and went into the room my grandparents set aside for the grandchildren. It was brightly decorated, toys and videos, albums full of memories and bed set in the middle to sleep on. To the side though was a desk with a computer on it, one of those well known company logos on the back that made me sigh. Everyone’s writings were always done by computer and systematically taken down, edited, and checked by the computer. I liked writing with pen and paper… there was something more mystical about it, a connection, a pull that would suck you into the pages. If you spelled a word wrong, you didn’t know it, but you knew what it read, what it meant. A secret grove where I could exist beyond the world that was before my eyes.

Slowly, I took a pencil and opened the book filled with so many stories and put it to the page. I waited, letting my mind pace itself as some story would come to life as it always did…. but nothing came to me. I fidgeted, thinking that maybe I was tiring myself out or maybe I wasn’t waiting long enough. I knew the real reason… it was because I couldn’t decide… I couldn’t make the choice of what I wanted to do with my life. Slowly I felt that burden coming back to me as I frowned, waiting, hoping something would come out onto the pages but they stared blank back at me just as I relaxed back in the chair. I blinked, trying to pull something out of my thoughts as they crowded around me in my head… the break up… the failure… now left with only a single choice. I closed my eyes, seeing the cage around me, trapped with no where left to go… a burden to the people I loved and unable to take care of them. I wasn’t strong enough… 

I bit my lip and angrily tore myself out of my head, putting my eyes back to the page before me as I slammed my hand onto the page, pencil trembling in my hand. Write. Write something! Anything! I clenched my fist hard, trying to will something to come… And before I knew it… I started falling. The chair, the room, everything sunk down into a bottomless hole. I didn’t know I was falling at first, before it began to cross my mind as the seat beneath me was left behind. I flailed my arms, started screaming as I looked down into an endless pit. When I looked up, there was nothing, not even a speck of light. I didn’t know how long I fell or how long I screamed, uncaring for which way was up or which way was down…

Eventually though, I slammed through something. It hurt… my body hurt as if though the entirety of my body was slapped with the hand of a giant, my eyes shut as I felt something consume me. It was… cool…. wet…? Slowly I opened my eyes for a single moment, shimmers and cascades of light above me swirling and changing…. Immediately I felt myself begin to cramp up, my muscles aching as I felt the air in my body diminishing quickly. Slowly I reached up before I began to swim towards the light, desperate to grab air, desperate to live before my head burst free and I filled my lungs with a heavy breath, like new life entering my body. I stayed afloat as I wiped my face, looking around, fear gripping at me as I saw nothing but water…. Wherever I was…. It felt like something left me in an ocean. I breathed as I slowly tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, unable to understand, relaxing back for moment.

Gotta breathe… just take a moment and breathe… think Eli…. Figure out….

What just happened?


End file.
